Private Internet Access

AFFORDABLE, BUT NO NETFLIX AND TOO MUCH OF A SERVER LOTTERY.

ONCE A DARLING among VPN subscribers for its low cost and broad service offering, PIA has had its ups and downs. Even now, server selection is something of a lottery. Connecting to ‘California’ delivered speeds of just 1.04Mbps, while connecting to ‘Silicon Valley’ netted 6.8Mbps. If we went with ‘Auto’, it connected us to Sydney (9.4Mbps) and the generic ‘US West’ hit 8.1Mbps. Some of those are good for streaming, some are not, and there’s no indication in the client about server loads or recommendations that might help.

Not that it’s all that great for streaming in any case. PIA is one the ISPs that has given up trying to work around Netflix and Hulu’s VPN bans — you simply cannot access these services while connected. Other sites, like Amazon still work just fine, however, and PIA is also BitTorrent-friendly.

There are elements to like in the basic client. It has a kill switch and leak protection, and the service will also block most ads from coming down the tunnel if you switch on the PIA Mace protection option.

Up to five devices can connect on a single account, and PIA also provides SOCKS5 proxies if you just want uncensored web browsing.